Gaming
Riot Games ‘League of Legends’ Source Code Stolen In Cyberattack
(CTN NEWS) – Riot Games, a major developer of video games, disclosed last week that hackers had used a social engineering operation to penetrate its “development environment,” where the business keeps its source code.
The hack could still be harmful because hackers gained access to the source code for Riot’s well-known games, League of Legends and Teamfight Tactics and the source code for the company’s legacy anti-cheat system.
Despite the company’s assurances to its users that “there is no indication that player data or personal information was obtained.”
According to industry insiders who talked with TechCrunch, the theft of the anti cheats source code, even for an old system, might aid hackers in creating more effective and difficult-to-detect cheats.
Earlier this week, systems in our development environment were compromised via a social engineering attack. We don’t have all the answers right now, but we wanted to communicate early and let you know there is no indication that player data or personal information was obtained.
— Riot Games (@riotgames) January 20, 2023
According to Paul Chamberlain, who oversaw Riot’s anti-cheat team until September 2020, it’s bad (beyond embarrassing) because it makes it simpler for cheat developers to comprehend the game and, as a result, easier to develop new cheats.
It also simplifies third-party league servers/clients to be created.
Since creating cheats “is as much (perhaps more) about the game itself as the anti-cheat system, having access to the game source code means you don’t have to reverse engineer the released binaries (which are frequently also obfuscated or encrypted).
And gives cheat developers better access to the intent of the game code through comments and variable/function/class name,” according to Chamberlain, who claimed that the legacy anti-cheat hasn’t been present in League of Legends for five years.
Access to an outdated anti-cheat system is primarily an intellectual curiosity, although it may provide some insight into the company’s priorities for what needs to be protected and how anti-cheat developers think.
League of Legends
Riot acknowledged this risk. The business warned that “any leak of source code can raise the probability of new cheats arising” in a tweet on Tuesday.
It also stated that its developers analyze the theft’s effects and “be prepared to provide solutions as rapidly as feasible if needed.”
Joe Hixson, a spokesman for Riot, declined to respond to any inquiries from TechCrunch through email.
The anti-cheat system’s source code theft could harm Riot and its gamers, according to an industry insider with an understanding of anti-cheat systems (who requested to remain anonymous because he was not allowed to talk to the press).
If the anti-cheat code is made public, “they are in trouble,” he added. Cheat makers will find it simple to get around everything if the anti-cheat source code is made public.
According to the insider, Riot’s old anti-cheat technology is undoubtedly still in use to stop various cheats and is actively seeking out and thwarting them.
As promised, we wanted to update you on the status of last week’s cyber attack. Over the weekend, our analysis confirmed source code for League, TFT, and a legacy anticheat platform were exfiltrated by the attackers.
— Riot Games (@riotgames) January 24, 2023
The theft of the system may jeopardize Riot’s capacity to track down cheat authors, identify the hardware used by cheaters, and fingerprint that hardware to ban the cheaters. It may even need a redesign of the anti-cheat system.
The insider added that malware writers might potentially use the source code. The insider predicted that it would be simpler to identify malware-prone areas in the [game’s] driver.
Motherboard claimed on Tuesday that the hackers are requesting a $10 million ransom from Riot Games to prevent the release of the stolen code.
The complete game code for League of Legends and associated tools, as well as Packman, your user-mode anti-cheat, have been obtained.
We know these artifacts’ importance and the effects their public release would have on your two most popular games, Valiant and League of Legends.
In light of this, we are humbly requesting an exchange of $10,000,000,” the ransom note, which Motherboard was able to get, stated.
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